Sunshowers (for Jeremy)

It takes a lot of courage to hold someone when they’re screaming.

Takes a lot of love to smile at someone when they’re angry.

Takes a certain amount of stupidity to make someone laugh when they’re crying.

There was once a girl who loved like a hurricane.
She breathed in tropical storms, she was all angles and sharp edges where she so desperately wanted curves, she left destruction in her wake, shouting truths to a town that had never seen her coming.

She met a boy who smiled like sunshowers.
He laughed like her favorite rock band, smoothed her edges, taught her to breathe easy, showed her how to speak instead of scream.

Sometimes the hurricane girl convinced herself that what she needed was another hurricane, but at the end of the day, she always came back to her sunshower boy because

He was the one who held her hand in ice rinks
Who consoled her after funerals
Who made her laugh better than anyone else
He was the boy who learned she loved like a hurricane, but she also left like one.
He learned that she laughed easily,
But she also cried.

But with him, she smiled everyday
Turned her tears into sunshowers
Grew from a hurricane into a poetry-spinning songbird
This songbird is apologizing for forgetting why she loved you.
I cannot promise that I will not forget again, but I want you to remember
I will always be the laughter that follows your bad jokes.
I will always be the scream that follows your gong hit.
I promise to be your safe house instead of your hurricane.
I will never put olives on your sandwiches, I will read you poetry over skype, if it rains, I will offer you half my umbrella, I will tell you I hate you a thousand times more than I tell you I love you, but I will only mean half of them.

And when we are apart, you an aspiring engineer/movie director/drummer, and I am a hopeful veterinarian/journalist/poet/songbird, when miles separate us, even when there are worlds between us, remember

I am never really more than a phone call away.